Numerous types of liquid nail polish formulations are sold commercially. Liquid nail polish formulations typically contain a primary film former such as nitrocellulose, a secondary film former such as toluene-sulfonamide-formaldehyde resin, a plasticizer such as camphor or dibutyl phthalate, and one or more solvents such as toluol, lower aliphatic alcohols, and acetates. In addition, these formulations usually contain coloring agents and fragrances.
There are a number of desirable properties which nail polish compositions should possess. In particular, a nail polish should dry and harden quickly, apply easily, be adherent, glossy, waterproof and suitably colored, wear well, be elastic, resist chipping, peeling and abrasion for a reasonable period of time, and be dermatologically innocuous.
An important property of a nail polish is its ability to dry rapidly when applied to a natural human, or even in some instances, natural animal (such as dogs) or artificial fingernail or toe nail. In practice, this rapid-drying property is difficult to achieve while retaining the other desirable characteristics such as gloss, wear resistance, etc. The coating process, however, can be time consuming since a coating of polish must dry before a subsequent coating can be applied to the first coating. Since the average drying time for a coating of conventional nail polish is about five minutes, the total time for completing the nail polishing process using conventional compositions can be 15 minutes or more.
The time consuming aspects of applying nail polish is of particular concern to women who work outside the home. These women need to have a product which can be easily applied and which dries in the shortest amount of time. Also, in the manicure and pedicure industries such as nail care and beauty salons, a nail polish which can dry in a period less than one minute would provide a significant advantage over the prior art compositions.
The art has attempted to reduce the time required for drying of nail polishes. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,275,807 provides a number of solvent systems which may be added to standard nail polish formulations to substantially hasten drying of a nail enamel composition to a durable, hard finish. These solvent systems, however, use highly volatile and noxious acetone. A need therefore continues for nail polish formulations which can dry rapidly and which overcome the disadvantages of the art.